Structures Sought for CASP13

Critical Assessment of Techniques for Protein Structure Prediction (CASP) community experiments aim to advance the state of the art in protein structure modeling. Every other year since 1994, CASP collects information on soon-to-be released experimental structures, passes on sequence data to the structure modeling community, and collects blind predictions of structure for assessment. About 100 modeling groups from around the world participate. Results of CASP experiments are published in special issues of the journal PROTEINS (e.g., CASP12: Proteins Vol 86, Issue S1, March 2018).

The thirteenth CASP round is scheduled to start on May 1, 2018. The organizing committee is particularly keen to include cryo-EM-derived structure targets in this round.

The success of CASP depends on the generosity of the structure determination community. Modeling targets are needed over a wide range of difficulty, for modeling both with and without the aid of templates. Targets that can be modeled based on structural templates should ideally have 50% or less sequence identity to the templates. Access to the structure in advance of its release by the PDB or its publication is not needed. With sufficient notification to CASP (a minimum of three weeks before release, more is better) there is no need to delay structure release. If you have recently determined a novel protein structure and will be depositing it to PDB, please suggest it as a target for CASP by visiting www.predictioncenter.org/casp13/targets_submission.cgi. If you have any questions please contact casp@predictioncenter.org.

CASP target providers are regularly invited to contribute to special issue papers, for example:

Posted on behalf of the CASP organizing committee:
John Moult, University of Maryland, USA
Krzysztof Fidelis, University of California, Davis, USA
Andriy Kryshtafovych, University of California, Davis USA
Torsten Schwede, University of Basel, Switzerland

Supported byNational Institutes of HealthNational Institute of General Medical Sciences